With the tip of his paring knife, Jon slipped the knot on the red worsted string that bound the small oiled-leather packet to the bow of the Room 4 brass key.
When he had claimed the key (#4) out of the collapsing taproom at the end of the very first loop, he had been too bewildered by the white glare of the rollback to understand why a piece of folded hemp paper had come through the reset clinging to the brass ring. In the second and third lives, he had focused entirely on the heavy square-bitted key and the double-struck royal mint mark stamped into its shoulder, which Sister Oda had later used to prove that the metal had suffered years of lock-tumbler wear inside a single repeating week.
Only this morning, with all ten fingers ringed and the bronze aqueduct fitting sitting downstairs as proof of a unified royal machine, did the folded slip of hemp paper inside the key trust yield its full meaning.
Jon smoothed the brittle, water-stained chits flat against the oak kneading board between his mug of chamomile tea and the fresh itemized lodging bill.
The slip measured four inches by three, cut from coarse military rag-paper and dated the twenty-second day of Harvest Month—seventeen days before the ninth dawn of Flood Month to which every return rewound.
